Trenton NJ, week Governor Murphy defended hiring former Passaic councilman, Marcellus Jackson, who, as a Passaic City councilman, was convicted of taking bribes from undercover FBI agents. Murphy called his decision to hire the convicted felon into the Department of Education his administration’s “new norm.”

“As we approach the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year, we are deeply disappointed that the administration is walking away from New Jersey’s students by reducing the PARCC assessment to count for only five percent of a teacher’s evaluation. These tests are about education, not politics.

Ridgewood Nj, The Department of Education has just released its annual list of teachers and their salaries for 2017. And the list of educators making $100,000 or more ie the $100,000 club. This list barely had any teachers on it more than a decade ago has grown to more than 5,000.

In 2016-2017, the average salary for teachers, librarians, guidance counselors and other non-administrative staff totaled $70,637, according to an NJ Spotlight analysis of salary data for public school districts and charter schools. The increase is about 1.5 percent higher than the previous year.

NJ Department of Education Unit “Q” Double-Dippers collected roughly $5.9 million last year
March 2,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Speaking of salaries, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on an investigation from New Jersey Watchdog that found that an obscure unit of the NJ Department of Education called Unit “Q” employs 40 “double-dipping” staff members, who collect pensions as well as paychecks. For example, Cathy Coyle, who collects an annual pension of $73,765 from the State, also takes home $151,862 for her DOE job as a “special services” employee in Unit Q.

From the Inquirer:

• Two-thirds of NJDOE’S top 60 Unit Q special services workers collect state pensions.
• Those 40 employees collected roughly $5.9 million last year – nearly $2.9 million in state pay plus almost $3 million from retirement checks.
• Thirty-eight of the double-dippers have six-figure incomes. Five receive more than $200,000 a year.

Most of them seem to work as either County Superintendents (irony alert: they control merit bonuses for district superintendents; see post below this) or Regional Achievement Center Executive Directors, who oversee NJ’s most troubled districts.

Data collected by http://watchdog.org/category/new-jersey/ and the http://www.philly.com/inquirer/